


thrown from the sun

by ssstrychnine



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 04:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6270280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>michonne considers maternity and finds a straight razor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thrown from the sun

**Author's Note:**

> this is also set after negan is burned to the ground and no one dies at all and everyone is happy yep.

Michonne doesn’t often go on runs with Rick. Neither of them like to leave Judith and Carl alone, even though Carl protests and even though there hasn’t been trouble at Alexandria in months. It seems too much like tempting fate. But Daryl is out with a twisted ankle and Carol is making sure he doesn’t pretend like it’s healed too soon and everyone else who might go is gone already, at Hilltop or on the road or close to home but not quite there yet. They don’t wait because Maggie is having phantom contractions and Carol has a list as long as her forearm of things they’ll need for the birth and Denise and Harlan have another and Michonne and Rick are on the road before they really realise what has happened. 

“You know we’re gonna get back and Maggie will’ve had the baby already,” says Rick, tapping his thumbs at the wheel.

“Just think of it as a holiday,” says Michonne. 

“A romantic getaway?” 

“If you like,” she says, smiling.

They’re heading towards the edges of their grid, a part no one has been before. The maps they have say there’s a town, big houses on hills with long driveways and small houses with flowers in their windows, but mostly they’re hoping for a drugstore or a vet, some place that hasn’t been picked clean. Hilltop haven’t been that way either and the Saviours had swallowed anything important when they went up in flames. After they’ve got what’s on the list Michonne is hoping for a candle, something sweet smelling to light when there’s blood under her fingernails and smoke in her hair. 

It takes them the better part of two days to get there. Alexandria’s population is growing and the area they need to scavenge is growing too. It’s a worry, but it’s a quiet worry. Maggie’s crops are beautiful and their walls are airtight and Eugene has almost everything he needs to get his solar panels up. They just need to go a little further out for medical supplies, for candles. 

There are almost no walkers in the streets, nothing dead in gutters or hanging from windows or crawling across concrete, and Michonne starts to think that perhaps it is a little like a holiday. There are weeds everywhere, bursting through the cracks in the road, but there are dandelion flowers too. 

“Quaint,” she says, but she doesn’t sheath her sword just yet. 

They find a pharmacy and take everything that’s not been stripped already, list or not. Though Andre had been born in a hospital, Michonne had planned for a home birth and she’s surprised at how quickly it all comes back. Maternity pads and iodine and peri bottles. It hurts a little, putting something together for a new mother, and Rick must realise this because he is never far from her, his hand at her shoulder, pressing a kiss to her forehead, touching her just because she’s in reach. She is grateful for it, that he notices and that he doesn’t make it into something bigger than it is. She is grateful for the way he doesn’t make her talk about it.

There are mansions at the edges of the town. The sort with private driveways and a thousand rooms and huge trees with tire swings for children. They pick the biggest one and break down the door and cut down the dead family that lived there. It’s barely touched, which isn’t surprising, most of the big houses were forgotten early on. They take everything. Non-perishable food and CDs and board games. Then they find the wine cellar and set themselves up in the biggest bedroom and drink until they’re unable to stop touching one another, unable to stop undoing buttons and zips and buckles, and the bottles fall to the floor.

In the morning Michonne finds a straight razor in the largest bathroom, rattling around in a draw with the rest of a kit, a badger brush and a leather strop and soap in a tin. The blade is slick and blue and she almost draws her sword to compare them. Rick comes up behind her, touches her arm, and she turns to him, flicking out the blade. His eyes narrow, just a little.

“You’re looking scruffy,” says Michonne, tilting her head to one side, her expression thoughtful.

“Is that so,” he murmurs, slow and low. He reaches out, drags his thumb against the side of the blade, makes a noise in the back of his throat when his blood blooms bright against the blade. 

“Come on,” she says and she closes the blade, gathers up the rest of the kit, brushes passed him and into the hall. 

She sets it up in the bedroom where they’d slept, not slept. He takes off his holster, puts his knife and gun on the floor, she leaves her sword leaning against the door frame. He waits in an armchair and she dips the brush in water, swipes it through the soap. She kneels between his knees and he never takes his eyes off her, he follows the movements of her hands, her mouth when she bites her lower lip, her eyelashes as she looks away from him to the tin in her hand. He sighs when she finally drags the brush down the line of his jaw. She moves in closer when she gets to the blade, so his thighs are pressed against her hips. She puts one hand on his shoulder, her fingers dipping under his collar, her thumb braced against his throat, to keep the razor from slipping. Rick has his eyes closed but when the cold metal hits his skin, just under his cheekbone, he opens them and there is something burning in the way he looks at her, something caged and raw and lovely.

“Don’t move,” she murmurs and she knows it’s cruel but she can’t help smiling.

It’s a strange thing, to have Rick Grimes under her hands like this. He isn’t vulnerable, he doesn’t allow himself to be, but here he is with his throat bared and a blade against his skin. _He loves me_ , she thinks, tipping his chin up with two fingers, _he trusts me_. She pulls the blade slowly down, cupping his face in her other hand, her fingers in his hair, keeping him still. She wipes the lather on the towel she has slung over the arm of the chair.

“How’re you doing?” She asks him, stilling the blade, letting him look at her. 

“Fine,” he says, but his voice is dry, a little hoarse. “I like you...here.” 

“I know,” she murmurs and she gently pushes his head back again and continues. 

Three quarters of the way through she cuts him. Her hand slips, the skip of a heart beat, and a line in red appears in the hollow of his cheek. Rick goes very still, a different sort of still, like someone who has seen their death so many times it’s second nature to them. Michonne stops immediately, pulls back, but he grabs her free hand and keeps her from backing up further.

“Michonne,” he says, his voice calm and steady. “It’s alright.”

“Yes,” she says quietly, letting all her breath out in one go. _I love him_ , she thinks, putting the blade to his cheek again, _I trust him_.

She finishes the shave quickly after that and he looks so strange that clean. He always looks strange after he’s shaved. _Good_ , but strange. She closes the blade, puts it down, takes his face in her hands. She tilts it from side to side, inspecting her work, and he lets her, ever patient, though his hands are at her waist now, pushing her shirt up, hot against her skin. 

“Good as new,” she says, satisfied, and she drops her hands to his shoulders. He tightens his hold on her waist and when she tries to stand he pulls her into his lap and she laughs. He grins and rubs his cheek against hers, clean and damp and smooth, and she marvels at the close shave, just as she’s supposed to. She kisses him with her hand at the back of his neck and he kisses her back and pulls her close as he is able, curled up in a chair that’s not really big enough for the both of them.

They spend the first half of the day in that room, lazy and sun-drunk and never much more than a hand span away from one another. Michonne feels like she’s on an island, a thousand miles from anything that could hurt them. But she can see a burned section of forest through the window and the air is stale and wild, this house has been ignored for so long. They can’t really be anywhere but in the dead world they’re rebuilding. It's a holiday, that's all. 

“We should go,” she tells Rick, when the sun is at it’s highest. He sighs, traces the line of her collarbones, the bridge of her nose, kisses her once more before reaching for his clothes.

They take the razor back with them. Rick argues that a sharp blade is always needed and Michonne listens and smiles and tells him he doesn’t have to argue. It sits in the back of the car with towels and pill bottles and a cinnamon candle that Michonne is going to burn to nothing in a week. Rick keeps his hand on her knee while they drive, he always does, and the warm weight of it is so sweet she shuts her eyes so it’s the only thing she feels.

When they get back Maggie is still pregnant and Daryl is still scowling and Glenn is set to burst he’s so close to being a father. Harlan is there, waiting to take Maggie to Hilltop where she’ll spend the last few weeks of her pregnancy. Michonne gives her everything they’ve brought and tells her everything she knows from when she’d given birth, lifetimes ago, and it’s not much and Carol has probably gone over all of it already and she stares at her hands while she does it, but Maggie hugs her and thanks her and she feels some small part of that hurt get lighter.

They keep the razor in their bathroom and most of the time they forget about it but sometimes Michonne will notice that Rick’s wild at his edges and she will plant him in a seat and he will be patient and still. It’s something about the blade, Michonne thinks, something about killing things with one blade and loving things with another. It makes her feel close to him, _closer_ to him, a ritual that’s not domestic, not his and hers bathrobes, but familiar in a way that acknowledges where they are and why they’re there and the sharp edges of their life together.

**Author's Note:**

> this was a prompt on tumblr and it is legit my fave trope ever honestly. the shaving thing i mean. idk why i felt the need to like... contextualise it but. there you go. say hello @oneangryshot if you like!


End file.
